Weapons

Cregger has figured out something most horror directors never do: structure is scarier than jump scares. Weapons tells the same night from several angles, and each retelling hands you one more piece of information you did not want.

The opening image is the kind of thing that gets under your skin and stays there. Kids running out of their front doors in the dark, arms out, all at the same minute. It is nothing. It is a shot of a suburban street. It is horrible.

What keeps this from being a pure endurance test is that it is genuinely funny. Not comic-relief funny. Uncomfortable funny, the sort where the whole cinema laughs and then immediately feels weird about laughing.

One storyline gets noticeably less room than the rest and the film knows it, wrapping it up with a shrug. Minor. This is still the most confident horror swing since Barbarian, from the same guy, which is starting to look less like luck and more like a whole career.

Do not watch it alone at 2am. We did. We regret it.